Thursday, April 05, 2007

George Gobel Must Have Been Lutheran


"After following Bob Hope and Dean Martin on The Tonight Show, Gobel famously quipped to Johnny Carson, 'Did you ever get the feeling that the world was a tuxedo and you were a pair of brown shoes?'" - George Gobel (quoted from Wikipedia).


If you are a Lutheran, did you ever get that feeling from being Lutheran? You naturally don't feel comfortable being lumped together with Roman Catholics. And you really don't like it when people consider you a Protestant, either.


I was taking a survey, and the following question came up:


"What best describes your religion?
-Roman Catholic
-Culturally Jewish Only
-Protestant
-Muslim
-Orthodox Christian
-Hindu
-Other, Christian
-Buddhist
-Orthodox Jewish
-Secular, no religion
-Conservative Jewish
-No religion but spiritual
-Reform Jewish
-Other"


I ended up putting Other, Christian. What should I have picked?


All the really great words are already taken, like catholic and orthodox. So we're stuck being named after a person. That ain't right, is it? I think we were the original evangelicals, although that name has been usurped also and now has a negative connotation.


How about we declare ourselves Orthodox Catholic?


Can someone please come up with a name that fits?

4 comments:

  1. It's funny you should mention this topic. I also choose Other because I don't feel comfortable with the other choices. I've come to terms with the fact that if I were to announce to the world that I was a confessional Lutheran, people's eyes would glaze over as I attempted an explanation.

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  2. Evangelical Reformed Catholic Orthodox Lutheran. (properly defined, of course). :)

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  3. Not only are we "other, Christian," but we are "other, Lutheran." I realized that afresh tonight when my Catholic sister-in-law mentioned that she would be permitted to take communion at her co-worker's Lutheran church. Must be ELCA or some other non-confessional Lutheran stripe.

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  4. TK!

    Good, I feel like I did the right thing, then. Although I wanted to put orthodox, I just knew they meant Eastern Orthodox instead.

    Dan@NR!

    We're ERCOL! But if we called ourselves that, then everyone would associate us with Urkel.

    So, how about ERCOL-PD!

    Barb!

    To paraphrase one of your commenters, why do we have to label everything? Well, this is why.

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